(Sunday).
Up, and walked up and down the town, and saw a pretty good market-place, and many good streets, and very fair stone-houses. And so to the great Church, and there saw Bishop Montagu’s tomb; and, when placed, did there see many brave people come, and, among others, two men brought in, in litters, and set down in the chancel to hear: but I did not know one face. Here a good organ; but a vain, pragmatical fellow preached a ridiculous, affected sermon, that made me angry, and some gentlemen that sat next me, and sang well. So home, walking round the walls of the City, which are good, and the battlements all whole. The sexton of the church is ________. So home to dinner, and after dinner comes Mr. Butts again to see me, and he and I to church, where the same idle fellow preached; and I slept most of the sermon. Thence home, and took my wife out and the girls, and come to this church again, to see it, and look over the monuments, where, among others, Dr. Venner and Pelling, and a lady of Sir W. Waller’s; he lying with his face broken. So to the fields a little and walked, and then home and had my head looked [at], and so to supper, and then comes my landlord to me, a sober understanding man, and did give me a good account of the antiquity of this town and Wells; and of two Heads, on two pillars, in Wells church. But he a Catholick. So he gone, I to bed.
stone people I did not know
’round the walls of the church
where I slept most of the sermon
my face broken
and my head an antiquity
on two pillars
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 14 June 1668 (Pepys’ notes for an unfinished entry)